John Carpenters They Live is a smart movie wrapped inside a dumb movie. The dumb movie partwith its cheesy effects, bad acting, corny dialogue, and stock tropesis just transparent enough that you can see the smart part inside dealing with the uniquely insidious nature of commercial culture and the sense of conformity it not just encourages, but engenders. This can make for a weird viewing experience because were never quite sure whether we should take the films ideas seriously and laugh off the stilted container that holds them or just let the B-movie ridiculousness take over. Carpenter is essentially making a comedy, but its not always a very good comedy, which means that its hard to justify its various aesthetic failings on the grounds of social satire. It also doesnt help that Carpenters good ideas ultimately fizzle, rather than catch fire; the first half of the film is a great set-up, but the second half is a letdown of lazy action sequences that do little more than lead to another outsider-hero exposing the system, which just so happens to be one of Carpenters favorite themes.

The films unnamed hero (he is credited at the end as Nada, which means nothing in Spanish) is an itinerant construction worker played by Roddy Piper, who at the time was best known as a WWF wrestling superstar whose Rowdy Roddy Piper persona was an outsized Scottish villain that people loved to hate. Piper played it well in the ring and when blaring into Gene Okerlunds microphone before and after his bouts with the likes of Hulk Hogan and Greg Valentine, which apparently was enough to convince Carpenter that he could carry an entire film on his massive shoulders (he had previously starred in the schlocky 1988 post-apocalyptic action movie Hell Comes to Frogtown). Unfortunately, that is simply not the case, as Piper is no Kurt Russell, the actor to whom Carpenter typically turned for these sorts of roles (see 1981s Escape From New York, 1982s The Thing, and 1986s Big Trouble in Little China). Piper has a decided lack of range and clear discomfort doing anything subtle or normal. Once he gets to turn on the rage and blast off a machine gun with one hand, he feels in his element; otherwise, his performance is amateurish at best.

The gist of the narrative, which is loosely based on the 1963 short story Eight OClock in the Morning by sci-fi writer Ray Nelson, is that Nada stumbles upon a worldwide conspiracy in which skeletal-faced aliens have infiltrated the human race and are essentially controlling us with subliminal messages that encourage lack of critical thinking, shallow desires, and excess consumption (OBEY, CONSUME, REPRODUCE). One can see these aliens in their true form (otherwise they just look like ordinary people) with sunglasses that have been developed by an underground resistance that is trying to spread the word by hacking television signals. The aliens are aided and abetted by the one-percenters, the wealthiest and most powerful people who stand to benefit financially by cooperating with them, which is perhaps the films most pointed jab at Reaganomics. The early sections of the film focus on Nada and other struggling blue-collar workers like Frank (Keith David), who had to leave his wife and children behind in Detroit to find work elsewhere. They meet in a shabby tent camp on the edge of the city for the homeless and dispossessed whose promised trickle down from the wealthy getting wealthier didnt happen.

They Live takes a delirious turn once Nada uses the sunglasses to reveal the way the world actually is (which is rendered in black and white, giving the images of the rubbery, bug-eyed, melted-skull alien faces an amusingly retro cheap-50s sci-fi vibe). Nada goes from being a struggling symbol of the oppressed working class to a gun-toting action hero who spends most of the rest of the film blasting aliens with heavy artillery, epitomized in the now immortal line he delivers upon walking into a bank full of aliens: I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And Im all out of bubblegum. According to Carpenter, that line was Pipers idea and came from a scrawled list of bits he came up with for her wrestling persona, which is why it is simultaneously hilarious and utterly nonsensical. But, thats just how the movie rolls. Later, Nada and Frank engage in what has to be the longest, most ludicrous fistfight in cinema history, which is only one of the films many self-conscious bouts of supreme silliness. At another point, Nada kidnaps Holly Thompson (Meg Foster), a cable television producer who gets shoehorned into the plot for little reason other than to potentially create a romantic subplot of some kind (romance has never really been Carpenters strong suit, which is why it goes nowhere).

There is no doubt that They Live has a genuinely enjoyable lunacy that can be infectious. Its low-budget and low-brow and ludicrous, although at times its underlying social satire has a pointed clarity (there is a reason it has been given so much attention by various academics, including Slavoj iek). The films take on dull-minded consumerism and the power of ideology makes it not just a sharp critique of the economic and social excesses of the 80s, but a prescient look ahead to an era in which the Occupy movement has been followed by the election of a self-serving billionaire to the highest political office. In a June 2016 interview on the WTF podcast, Carpenter told Marc Maron, [They Live] was my rage at the Reagan Revolution, and yuppies, and the greed of the 80s. I couldnt take it. One can only imagine what kind of movie he would make today.

They Live Collectors Edition Blu-ray

Aspect Ratio

2.35:1

Audio

English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround

English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo

Subtitles

English

Supplements

Audio commentary by writer/director John Carpenter and actor Roddy Piper

Video interview with Carpenter

Video interview with actress Meg Foster

Video interview with actor Keith David

Watch, Look, Listen: The Sights & Sounds of They Live featurette

Original EPK: The Making of They Live

Footage from the commercials created for the film

Original theatrical trailer

TV spots

Still gallery

Distributor

Shout! Factory

Release Date

November 6, 2012

COMMENTS

They Live looks about as good as its going to look on Shout! Factorys Collectors Edition Blu-ray. The high-definition image is generally sharp and well-detailed, allowing us to see every pock mark on Roddy Pipers cheeks. Carpenter and cinematographer Gary B. Kibbe light the film like a comic book, with garish red, blue, and green lights that are nicely rendered. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1-channel remix of the original stereo soundtrack (which is also included) is very good, as well, with ample directionality and surround effects. Given the films cult status and strong fanbase, its not surprising that Shout! Factory has assembled an array of supplements to satiate them, beginning with a highly entertaining audio commentary by writer/director John Carpenter and actor Roddy Piper. There is also a 10-minute video interview with Carpenter, a 5-minute interview with actress Meg Foster, and an 11-minute interview with actor Keith David. Watch, Look, Listen: The Sights & Sounds of They Live is an 11-minute featurette that includes interviews with director of photography Gary B. Kibbe, stunt coordinator Jeff Imada, and co-composer Alan Howarth. From the archives we get a an 8-minute making-of featurette from the electronic press kit, 3 minutes of footage from the commercials made for the film, an original theatrical trailer, four TV spots, and a hefty stills gallery of production photos and promotional materials.